So sue me

Slow news day, so I'm leaving you today with a video of a bird stealing Doritos.

http://failblog.org/2010/02/22/shoplifting-win/

Google Streetview

So I figured out yesterday that I can find my house on Google Streetview. I was pretty excited. The house looked pretty good. The grass looked green, and there wasn't any vandalism or anything. I mentioned this to my dad, who told me he "wasn't impressed".

He clarified that he wasn't impressed that now, everybody with access to the Internet will be able to know where our home is, and what it looks like. I wasn't buying it, but he seemed pretty sure of himself.

Now, why is this such an invasion of privacy? I took a deeper look, and found that while Google wasn't breaking any laws, they have been getting a lot of backlash for the Streetview project. This isn't really new to Google, who has done a lot of things that were deemed "questionable" (i.e Google Books, Google Buzz and Gmail in the early days). But while I can understand the controversy of scanning copyrighted books without permission or storing people's private information without their knowledge, I don't see much of a problem with photographing houses. It's not any more an invasion of privacy as letting people walk on sidewalks.

In my opinion, the main opposition here comes from "future shock". It's a term you might have come across before. It's pretty much the feeling you get when you see technological advancements happening faster and faster. You feel lost, and you feel like the world's a worse place off, somehow. And that might be true. For every benefit coming out of a product, there's a downside. While Facebook gives you a chance to reconnect with people you haven't seen for years, it's possible to spend hours waiting for updates from people.

If there is one thing Google wants to accomplish, it's to obtain as much information as possible, and make it easy to access (maybe part of the reason Finland is declaring the internet a legal right). That's what they did with their search engine, their photo service, and their video service, which have pretty much cataloged a good deal of the Internet. That's what they're doing with Google Books, even with the opposition. And that's what they're doing with Streetview.

Streetview can be considered an experiment for now, but there are already some uses to it. Yesterday, I used it to plan an outing into the city, looking for restaurants close to where I was going and looking at landmarks to help me find my way there when I actually was there. You can use it to look at neighborhoods, to see if the place your new apartment is located is actually as good a neighborhood as the landlord claims. One of my favorite uses is to locate landmarks around the world, and get a good look at them, with shots like this:

which makes for a better experience than just through pictures, anyways.

And to those people who might oppose Streetview, let me ask you this: what was the first thing you looked for when you heard about it?

What are your opinions on Streetview? Leave your comments below.

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Linky Linky (part deux)

I'm feeling a bit lazy today, so today's gonna be another link day.

For those physics geeks, like me: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/what-is-time/

Now, as a rule, I stay away from card games other than poker and blackjack. But this is a pretty fun game: http://www.kongregate.com/games/zanzarino/elements

Fail: http://failblog.org/2010/02/26/celebration-fail/

And, finally, I recommend you to try out the YouTube HTML5 beta. For those of you who are frustrated with the CPU-sucking Flash, this is a pretty good improvement over YouTube's current player: http://www.youtube.com/html5

That's it for now, I'll see you all tomorrow!

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The Verdict is In!

Well, that's about as good an ending as we could have hoped for.

It would seem that iTzLuPo has lost the battle with Microsoft. His Twitter account has been deleted, as I had mentioned yesterday, and he changed his stance completely, posting an apology on his YouTube channel earlier today. Then, in a really unforeseen move, iTzLuPo's channel was deleted. I took a quick glance at Google, and while there are many stories on Lupo, the guy himself can't be found on the Internet.

So, what happened?

I see two possibilities. One, the online community has completely cast out Lupo, making him realize that he was wrong, causing him to make his apology. His accounts were deleted by Twitter and Youtube, and he decided to take his permaban on Xbox Live.

Two (which, to me, seems like what actually happened), his parents wised up. If you weren't aware, somebody on Twitter, @WeKnowWhoYouAre, posted Lupo's full contact information, including his address, his phone number, and even his parent's names (@WeKnowWhoYouAre has been suspended by Twitter for "suspicious activity", likely because of the posting of Lupo's information). With the number of people that are angry at him, some people were bound to call Lupo's home, and his parents were bound to answer. I'm betting that Lupo's parents finally found out about their son's shenanigans on the Internet, and decided to pull the plug.

As for the pro (apparently, there's a space there), I'm told that he is not actually suspended, or even reprimanded. When going over the video, he admits that he was a bit too aggressive in his tone. That about sums it up on the corporate end.

And as for all of us gamers who watched from the sidelines? We just got told by Microsoft that they aren't going to be putting up with hackers, modders, and general cheaters anymore. Which is fine for most of us, since we don't do any of those things (right?). We should be relieved. But I can't help but sense that there might be even more chapters in this story, and we might see a lot more stories in the future like the saga of Lupo and the pro.

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You lost your mind boy? ('cause I'll help you find it)

Kudos if you know where the quote is from.

It has recently come to my attention that there is a little spat going on concerning a person known as "itzlupo" and pretty much the rest of the gaming world. If you aren't following this, let me explain.

Sometime this week, itzlupo was playing Modern Warfare on Xbox Live. He allegedly was being harassed by a mod called "thepro", who has a history of being a bit on the brash side when acting out his powers. Now, Lupo has a very large, if not long, history of being a modder when it comes to Xbox, having a large Youtube library full of mods and even evidenced in a personal Tweet sent to Robert Bowling, taunting him about his ability to mod (I can't get the tweet because iTzLuPo's Twitter account has been deleted.) Lupo was subsequently suspended from Xbox Live by thepro.

So, being a banned modder, he did what any banned modder would do: he whined. He made a video to share with other people and worked up quite a following. Thepro's previous history as a hasty banner helped along the modder a lot.

However, thepro's boss, Stephen Toulouse, stuck up for his deputy, and released a fully unedited video showing thepro being heavily provoked by your average preteen gamer.

However, I still have to come up with a conclusion on this. I was dead set that Lupo was guilty, but there are serious inconsistencies on both sides. On the fully unedited video, it can be seen that Lupo was not in fact the one provoking thepro, but a guy named mmmmmhhhhmmmmmPie (I might have mispelled that). This one mistake puts me in doubt.

However, there are a lot more things counting against Lupo. The fact that he edited the video in the first place does not look good for him. Also, even if he wasn't doing anything when the video was being filmed, Lupo might as well be banned from Xbox Live with all the obvious modding that he's doing. Calling attention to himself might not have been in his best interest. Like Tiger Woods before him, Lupo managed to blow this whole thing wide open, and even if the first incident wasn't actually incriminating, all the videos on his channel certainly are, especially now that he's under Microsoft's radar. Another thing that might not look suspicious, but doesn't sit well with me is his denial of anything bad said about him. I suppose that we all feel this, but it still doesn't sit right. Lupo has deleted his Twitter account as I had mentioned earlier, and it appears that every comment directed towards him on YouTube has to get approved, of which he only selects the "Pro Lupo" comments, portraying him in an unnecessarily positive light. Lastly, he seems to be talking too much about suing Microsoft. What would he be suing them for? The $60 for the one year membership they cost him? Any other expenses that he might have were agreed to when he accepted the Terms of Service. If he ever went to court for this, it would never turn out well for him, since Microsoft could easily sue him for their legal costs if they won the case, which would be disastrous for Lupo, who still attends high school.

So, who won here? Nobody! Thepro didn't win, since he is reportedly suspended (though this might be false), and Lupo definitely didn't win, because now he has 90% of the internet against him. If more information comes up tomorrow, I'll be reporting a final verdict.

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Stardraft II

As I have mentioned before, I'm still pretty mad at Blizzard, namely because they seemed more concerned about harvesting their quarter of a billion dollars from World of Warcraft. However, I'm willing to forgive them, if they keep to their promise this time and release Starcraft II before July hits. That being said, I'm getting really excited for Starcraft II.

I've never really played much of the RTS genre. I've played Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth a couple of times, but I've never really played that for the last 4 or 5 years. And I've never played Starcraft.

But Blizzard says they're supposed to be gearing the game to all skill levels, which should appeal to everyone. My friends tend to play Starcraft a lot (or they used to, anyway, until they heard Starcraft II was coming soon... back in 2007 *cough* *cough*... OK, I'm officially through with the vaporware talk), so they should be able to find good matches through Blizzard's new match system, and I should be able to find a couple of nubs that are the same level as me that I can beat.

The game should really appeal to really experienced players (You know, Koreans) too, with the new classes that keep people guessing as to exactly how the hell to use them. The only problem I foresee is people who purposely do terrible in the skill level match just to get a bunch of new players as opponents, and win every match. But that would just be boring.

So, Blizzard, I'm taking you off of my Axis of Evil. You'll just sit beside Bungie in the naughty corner.

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How mafiaboy didn't teach us anything

Got one more question for everyone, and maybe you can help me with this. Why is it wireless B+G+N? Why did they skip letters, and inconsistently, for that matter? Is it random?

As a follow-up to what happened to be my second blog post, apparently some other people feel the same way about placing rules on the internet.

Now, this is something I feel poses a real threat to us, maybe not now, but in the future. Bear with me for a moment. Imagine that you're twenty years in the future. Your life is full of computers, all communicating with each other. Your lights turn on with your alarm, your fridge is able to tell you what to have for breakfast, your car is able to predict the traffic, the whole works. But there is still no actual security on any of this stuff, other than what Norton or whoever is giving you, which really isn't much. Now, imagine some Chinese, Russian, Korean, or any hacker manages to take down the entire computer network for a city, or even a country. Really, everything would grind to a halt. Some cars might crash. Nothing really drastic would happen, except 99% of people would probably have nothing to do until the computers come back up. But who knows how long that would take, if nobody has been taking measures to keep this from happening?

Sound far-fetched? So did taking down Yahoo.com, back in 1999. But then a 15-year-old kid named Michael Calce AKA mafiaboy did it. Yahoo didn't know what to do with it. Neither did Amazon, Dell, Ebay, or CNN. That 15-year-old kid reportedly did over $1 billion worth of damage.

That's pretty much why I feel that the government, the science community, someone should be doing something about the paltry security we have right now on the internet.

But, unfortunately, I don't decide anything.

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